Not Much Time Left for Kings

You can take this Pacific business too far.

The Kings might have on a too-peaceful Sunday night when they spent a good part of the evening lauding the competition and decrying fatigue after not spending enough time hitting the division-rival Coyotes in a 4-1 loss at the America West Arena.

“We didn’t play a bad game, but for the importance of the game, we didn’t play a great game either,” Coach Larry Robinson said. “And what we needed was a great game.”

The Kings also needed the two points a great game would have brought because Calgary, their immediate quarry in the Western Conference playoff race, had beaten the New York Islanders, 2-1.

The Kings trail by five points with 12 games to play, and they have three days off before they face Dallas.

Three days to ponder their playoff situation, get some rest and practice a bit. Three days split by the trading deadline, which is Tuesday at noon.

Three days to wonder who will be around when the roll is called for Wednesday’s practice.

“You don’t know,” said defenseman Doug Bodger, rumored to be coveted in a couple of ports, including Detroit, though a King official has called the scenario unfounded.

“I’ve heard another team too. I won’t say which, but they have more points than we do.”

He’s fatalistic about the whole thing.

“It goes through your head . . . but this late in my career, if I go to a good team, it’s got to be a positive,” Bodger said. “But it’s hard to leave the family behind again. Right now, I’m an L.A. King and if they want me to play, I’ll play for this team.”

Winger Russ Courtnall is rumored to be accompanying Bodger to Detroit--”to carry his bags,” he quipped--and is a veteran of deadline-day discussion.

“I went to Vancouver from Dallas around then, and to New York [Rangers],” he said. “Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. There’s not much you can do about it.”

What the Kings can do is prep for the future, while pondering the past.

“You don’t control that,” Rob Blake said. “Players come and go and the deadline passes, but you’ve still got a game Thursday against Dallas.

“Right now we’re idle for three days and we’ve got to watch other teams. It’s hard, but it’s the situation we’ve put ourselves in.”

Part of that came Sunday night, when the Kings ran into Phoenix goalie Nikolai Khabibulin.

Again.

He’s 5-1 against them, with three shutouts and only Luc Robitaille’s first goal in 10 games kept that from being four.

“I don’t know why,” Khabibulin, a former Russian Olympian, said of his mastery of the Kings. “It’s just the way it goes. Against some teams, I’ve been terrible.”

In this case, the Kings made it a bit easier for him.

“Yes, he made some great stops,” Robinson said, “ . . . but for the most part, if you let a goaltender see the puck, which he was doing most of the night, he’s going to stop it.”

Robinson’s complaint was his usual one: a lack of King traffic in front of the net, the better to tip in rebound shots or screen the goalie.

The Coyotes got that sort of traffic on the game’s first goal, scored by Keith Tkachuk after he took a pass from Robert Reichel, who had just arrived in town after being acquired Saturday from the New York Islanders.

Robitaille countered, but Oleg Tverdovsky made it 2-1 at 14 minutes of the first period and the Kings--who have won four of their last six games--were looking uphill the rest of the night.

Deron Quint’s second-period goal and Reichel’s empty-net shot in the third finished the scoring.

Whether it finished some King careers will be known by Tuesday, the same time that management’s opinion of their playoff chances will be determined. Some trades would signal white-flag time. Others, thoughts of the future.